New Zealand’s second biggest listed company,
Fletcher Building
, is on the hunt in Australia for a new chief financial officer who could be CEO potential in a few years’ time.

Long-standing finance chief Bill Roest, who has worked in various roles at Australia- and NZ-listed construction firm Fletcher since 1986, is retiring in September 2013. His move follows the recent retirement of his CEO, Jonathan Ling.

New Zealand has a small pool of CFO talent for a company of Fletcher’s size, so the company is looking to poach a top-flight candidate who can help new CEO Mark Adamson overhaul the company culture, including the finance team.

Adamson was appointed in June and started as CEO in October after heading Fletcher’s Laminates and Panels division.

He moved from his base at subsidiary Formica Group’s headquarters in Cincinnatti to Auckland to take up the job, but CFO understands Adamson has only agreed to stay in the role for a few years.

A spokesman for Fletcher said Adamson had not “put a time frame on his tenure", but the “typical tenure of a senior executive" is often only a few years, he said, so “the expectation is that [a CFO] would have potential to be CEO".

He said the company was searching in Australia and further afield to fill Roest’s position.

As well as shuffling roles as a result of Adamson’s position at Laminates and Panels becoming vacant, so far Adamson has created a new wide-ranging position of chief executive business strategy and performance, hiring Gerry Bollman – with whom he worked at Formica – to fill the role.

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Bollman has a background in consulting and Adamson is looking for someone with similar strategic experience for the CFO role.

Fletcher Building’s earnings have suffered with the downturn in the construction sector. While sales were up 20 per cent, net earnings were down 35 per cent to $185 million in the 2012 financial year to June.

Non-executive director Hugh Fletcher, the last member of the founding Fletcher family connected with the company, retired in September.